Destiny Denied?
by Rumour of an Alchemist
Summary: Rough Sketch. Alternate Universe. At the age of seven, Lily had dreams about a future she found horrible. It's now the summer of 1976, and she really needs a word with 'Sev' about where he's going? Rated 'M' in case it ever turns out to be more than a one-shot. 12th August, 2016: Now a two-parter. 15th August, 2016: Author Notes, chapter 2, expanded.
1. Summer, 1976, part 1 of 2

Disclaimer: I am not J.K. Rowling. I do not own Harry Potter.

Note: The following short sketch is set in 1976 in an alternate universe in which (some years earlier) seven year old Lily Evans had a series of dreams about 'the future', which she's never been able to forget. Since when, she's been trying to change things, with not much success thus far. (For the sake of the scenario, I've assumed that for one reason or another - whether fear of being thought crazy, or of being mistaken for some sort of 'seer' - that she hasn't ever actually told anyone who matters (and who believed her at the time) that she's had 'dreams about a future' where the things she dreamt about keep happening.) This story is for now a one-shot.

Slang: 'Sprog' is used as slang for a young child or baby.

Rating: This story is rated 'M', just to be on the safe side in case it ever amounts to more than a one-shot.

Further Note: (12th August, 2016) Due to a point made by one reviewer, which I found interesting, I have now expanded this piece to a two-parter; but I really need to get back to polishing up the next instalment of my Saint Potter universe centaur piece, chapter 4 of 'The Politics of Men and Beasts'.

* * *

It was an overcast day, in a Cokeworth park, in the summer of 1976.

Two teenagers – a boy and a girl – are sitting on some swings, next to one another. The girl is Lily Evans, pondering things, and trying to work up the determination to say what needs to be said.

The boy is an old friend – almost a _former_ friend – and speaks first.

"I'm sorry about what happened by the Lake, after the Defence OWL. I should have said thank you."

"Yeah, well, it's not like you called me a mudblood or anything, and we were all under a lot of strain what with the exams and everything." Lily replies.

She knows of course – something which haunts her darker dreams and nightmares – that he was apparently _destined_ to use that very word though. Or at least the plural form of it: Mudbloods.

Ever since the eve of her seventh birthday, when she dreamt of a future, Lily Evans has been trying desperately to avert that future from coming to pass. From the perspective of first a child, and then of a teenager, it seemed a future so messy and utterly, utterly, futile and _pointless_. It was a future which featured her dying beneath the wand of a maniac, in the hope of delaying for a rescue that was never realistically going to come for herself and a child that she'd borne to an egocentric prat that she'd spent most of her school-days loathing the guts of yet somehow still ended up getting married to – and all of that by a time less than a year past her twenty-first birthday.

 _Blow that for a game of soldiers_.

Or at least that had been the idea,

But so far, everything she'd tried, from trying to make things different with Petunia, to her efforts to change Severus' home life, and the attempt to persuade the Sorting Hat to put her in Slytherin (the last had been a catastrophic failure, at the memory of which Lily still occasionally cringed) had still resulted in everything going pretty much the same as in the original timeline. She'd never completely given up hope of avoiding the sprog (however cute the sprog itself might have mostly been) with James Potter and the fearful and nasty end at the wand of a mass murderer – but she'd been becoming increasingly resigned to it, until that small difference that day by the lake, after the OWL exam.

Even trying to avoid destiny as she was, she wasn't sure if she could have ever forgiven Severus if he'd said those fatal words, 'mudbloods like her', but somehow, between raging at the idiocies of the 'Marauders' and an air of perfectly aloof concern for proper school discipline and fairness, she'd kept him from saying them, and now she wasn't sure what happened next.

There seemed to be a small window – she wasn't sure if it was a trick or not – to avoid the 'fate' she'd seen in her dreams, all those years ago.

"I might have." Severus mumbled, an expression of dark torment on his face. "Used that horrible bad word. I was at the end of my tether that day, and it gets thrown around so much in Slytherin. You get used to it, and it slowly creeps into your consciousness. There are a lot of people in Slytherin who don't like what I do have to do with you, and there are so many eyes always watching, and tongues always wagging around Hogwarts, that it's so difficult to know when or _if_ it's safe to say anything about it to you. It's only here, away from all that, that I feel that I can actually say what's going on; what it's like. And these are powerful people, some of them, or at least the children of powerful people."

Huh. She'd never really thought about what Severus might be having to live with, day after day, week-in, week-out, like _that_.

"We'll have to think of something to do about that." Lily said firmly. "At least, that is, if you _want_ us to do so? You're going to have to choose a side at some point, Severus, they won't stand for anything else. Theirs or mine?"

Severus gulped.

"Yours. Only, ever, _always_ yours. But it's so _hard_."

They sat there, swinging in silence, apart from the squeak of the chains, for a while, then Severus abruptly got off his and stood up, glanced furtively around, and then spread his arms.

"There's something I want to show you, Lily. Something I've been working on, as a surprise for you. Something based on something you did that day that I first spoke to you."

And he flexed his fingers, and then _took off_ to hover, about a foot off the ground. He held himself there, for about ten seconds, before he came down gently back to land. And he'd done it without a wand.

"What? Is there some controlled levitation potion you've been working on?" Lily questioned, amazed by this.

"No wands. No potions. No broomsticks or other items. Just pure magic." Severus said. "Inspired by you, and the way you floated off the swing that day."

"That was accidental magic, Sev. That's the sort of thing you do as a one-off, without thinking, as a child, but can't ever do again afterwards. Witches and wizards can't fly without a spell or potion or… or… 'something'."

"We can, and I've worked out a way to do it." Severus said, his face now lit up with pride. "Inspired by _you_. It's my greatest invention, to date. It's what I've been working towards with _levicorpus_ , and everything else like that, except only I know about this, and now you. I'm still ironing out some minor problems, but I can try to teach you, if you'd like. Obviously somewhere that nobody – magical or muggle – can see."

"That's… that's incredible. And yes please, Sev." she said, her face lit up with the enthusiasm which she felt. Severus' fate as a Death Eater must still be possible to put off, if he could invent something like this, and then trust and like her enough to share it first and exclusively with _her_.

* * *

Author Notes:

So: the first real difference that Lily has noticed from the 'future' she dreamt of (in which her role is assumed to have been and to have played out exactly as in the canon universe) is that due to years of efforts that she has been making the scene after the Defence OWL by the lake played slightly differently from what she was expecting, just at the point that she was about to give up on trying to save Severus (from becoming a Death Eater and going off to join Lord Voldemort, which she's fairly certain he must have done in the 'future' she dreamt about) or even to trying to stay friends with him. After that, she didn't really want to speak with him at Hogwarts, about things, but wanted a private - well away from any other witches or wizards or friends - word with him about their friendship, back in Cokeworth.

Lily hasn't quite grasped (yet) how Severus sees her, or what he feels about her.

I've assumed that as a child (and then an early teenager) Lily hasn't quite the same view of (or ability to understand) how her adult self would have viewed James (or for that matter, Harry). Mind you; she's been getting closer to the mindset – especially as hormones, and various social pressures and lessons kick in.

It's not made clear (or at least not to my mind) in canon, where Lord Voldemort or Severus Snape learned to fly without broomsticks or the like. Canon Harry sees Voldemort flying months in such a fashion before canon Harry sees canon Severus flying and as far as I can see just assumes that it's a trick that Lord Voldemort taught to Severus. However, canon Lord Voldemort seems to me _precisely not the sort of person to share unique or rare magical secrets with anyone_ – he apparently doesn't even tell his most loyal and trusted Death Eaters (such as Bellatrix) who are their guardians just what his horcruxes really are – and it seems to me at least as plausible that Severus invented (or discovered in some old tome) how to fly without a broomstick, and showed it off to Lord Voldemort as part of his initiation into the Death Eaters; maybe it was even what got canon Severus (despite his poverty-stricken background, disgrace of a mother (who married a muggle!) and half-blood status) into the Inner Circle of the Death Eaters at such an early age? At the time of these notes, I know of nothing in canon (or said post-canon by J.K. Rowling) which would contradict the theory that Severus is the one who invented/'discovered' flying without a broomstick, and it's an idea I certainly intend to reuse/run with in other stories...

This piece is a one-shot. It _could_ split off into a universe (if Lily notices that Severus actually likes her quite a lot, and she chooses him, over James) which goes in a different direction from canon, but I am sufficiently busy with other sufficiently many other ongoing pieces at the time of these notes that I don't have the resources to try to flesh such thoughts out and to take them much further.

NB

Now expanded to a to a two-parter as of 12th August, 2016. Severus was a bit slow and – beyond his initial reaction to Lily in this chapter – needed some time to think some things through, thoroughly.


	2. Summer, 1976, part 2 of 2

(Author Notes expanded, 15th August, 2016)

Disclaimer: I am still not J.K. Rowling. I still don't own Harry Potter.

Note: The following is a second look into events which take place during the summer of 1976 in an alternate universe in which (some years earlier) seven year old Lily Evans had a series of dreams about 'the future', which she's never been able to forget. Since when, she's been trying to change things, with not much success until a few small things very recently. (For the sake of the scenario, I've assumed that for one reason or another - whether fear of being thought crazy, or of being mistaken for some sort of 'seer' - that Lily hasn't ever actually told anyone who matters (and who believed her at the time) that she's had 'dreams about a future' where the things she dreamt about keep happening.) This story is for now a two-parter.

Rating: This story is still rated 'M', just to be on the safe side in case it ever amounts to more than a two-parter. I didn't say anything at all about high quality underwear purchased in France in early February, 1978, on the advice of an employer who has very particular ideas about what _should_ be gifts for _La Saint-Valentin_. ('Honestly, this young Englishman is in urgent need of a firm but paternal guiding hand, if he imagines the previous year that some _potions text_ is an appropriate gift...' - thoughts of an as yet (at the time of writing of this note/rating, in August, 2016) unnamed Frenchman)

* * *

Several weeks have gone past. Various things have happened during those weeks, some of them more surreptitiously carried out (and carefully removed from the possibility of any prying eyes) than others. And then, another overcast summer afternoon sees Lily and Severus back on the swings.

Lily has had a feeling that Severus has been working up to something for some time, now, and this time he actually comes out with it:

"I wrote to the headmaster." Severus says. "I asked him if he wanted me to spy on Slytherin for him? I tried to be polite about it – to say that it would be me reporting on things that Professor Slughorn is too busy to investigate properly, or too nice a man to want to believe and look at any more than necessary. He wrote back last night, and said 'no'." Severus' shoulders slump slightly. "So that's that. I don't think the headmaster has liked or trusted me very much ever since that night I'm not supposed to talk about, but which James Potter claims he saved my life on."

That, by the way, had been another of Lily's failed attempts to change the way that things were happening. She'd tried to put Severus off from going to investigate the passage under the Whomping Willow – since some time 'after the event' in her 'future' dreams James and company had explained to her the bit about Remus being a werewolf, and Sirius having (rather stupidly) set a trap for Severus on that one occasion – but of course her attempts to get Severus to stay away had only made him more curious and determined to investigate…

Lily really hasn't been at all good at this whole 'trying to change the possible future' thing up until that one small success that day by the lake.

And she has had to constantly pretend _not_ to know the details of what had _really_ happened that night with James and Sirius and Remus, since there shouldn't have been any way whatsoever that she _could_ know those yet, without a lot of awkward explanations – and there might not ever be any way that she could 'know' them, this time.

"Umm. So the headmaster doesn't like or trust you much." she said, trying to sound diplomatic. "So why would you want to spy for him anyway?"

"I wouldn't, but I don't want to have to be in Slytherin, this next school year, pretending to like and get on with everyone, unless I was pretending to do it for a good cause – like spying for the headmaster. And I _would_ have to be pretending, because you were right: the fact that Potter and his gang do stuff for a laugh doesn't excuse the bad things that Mulciber and the others in Slytherin do, either." an explanation started to tumble out of Severus in a positive torrent of words. "In fact at least Potter has the excuse of being a brainless Gryffindor, for acting the way that he does, whereas Mulciber _should_ know and act better. He's a _Slytherin_. It's supposed to be the best house to be in – or at least it _was_. Before it all started going wrong, some time. But anyway, I can't put up with it – not having to pretend to like it – or not without a _good_ reason now, so since the headmaster doesn't want me, I'm going to have to write to Professor Slughorn and ask if he can get me a job anywhere? I've got OWLs, now, so I don't _have_ to stay on at school, and it would be better _and more useful_ than the alternatives. Ideally, I'd like to go somewhere abroad, since that way I'd be less likely to 'bump into' anyone, and they probably wouldn't think it worth while to come looking, since I'm only a half-blood 'nobody', but I don't know if that would be possible, and I'd have to take probably anything. Well: anything 'not wrong'. And I suppose Potter and co. will say that I'm running away, and a coward, which I will be, but _not from them_ – but let them and everyone else think it if they want."

"Err…" said Lily, her mind reeling.

Her grasp on the details of this long and tremendously convoluted piece of Severus reasoning was somewhat shaky, but somewhere in the middle of all that, she'd latched onto the facts that Severus had decided that:

1) he didn't like Mulciber (and friends) very much any more, or at least that was the _gist_ of what she'd got on that point.

2) he was going to leave Hogwarts and try to get a job – 'abroad' if at all possible, to minimise his chances of meeting 'the wrong sort of people'.

She wasn't sure what she'd been expecting, or hoping for, with this whole trying-to-change-things stuff… certainly nothing like _this_ , however. Who the hell was she supposed to work alongside in NEWT level potions classes, if Severus wasn't there? He was the only person remotely close to her in level of brewing ability (okay; he was _better_ than her on some counts), and now that it had seemed that just *maybe* he wouldn't go completely bad after all (as he would have done, according to the dreams she'd had all those years ago), she'd been starting to anticipate possible NEWT level projects she could attempt to work on with him.

Life just _wasn't fair_ , sometimes, it seemed…

"Of course, I'll write to you whenever I can. I might even, if I'm really lucky, be able to get days off at weekends, if I can find out how to apparate, and make it into Hogsmeade to meet up with you, if you want that." he continued.

"Ohh." she said, and smiled rather weakly.

This wasn't at all supposed to happen…

The swings slowly squeak, as the teenage girl and boy sit there on them, pondering…

* * *

Author Notes:

Since Severus' initial action/response to Lily's words, as indicated in the previous chapter, besides showing to Lily the odd piece of magic Severus has been doing a _lot_ of hard thinking, and reached conclusions approximately as he tries to outline/explain to Lily as above.

As Severus sees it, being in Slytherin house and openly defying 'anti-mudblood' and 'pro-Voldemort' sentiment is not an option. However, 'anti-mudblood' and 'pro-Voldemort' opinions are not things which he can sincerely espouse or support any longer, and he feels unable to now even _pretend_ to hold them, unless it is for a genuinely good cause, such as spying on his fellow Slytherins for the headmaster. (Possibly he is afraid that without the constant reminder of a good cause, he might be tempted to 'backslide', and to start actually believing the things again...)

Anyway, Severus wrote to the headmaster, with his offer, and after due consideration the headmaster wrote back, politely thanking him, but saying 'no'. (Besides not liking – or at least not trusting – Severus much, Albus Dumbledore was slightly confused receiving this bizarre offer, out of the blue, and suspected that it was either some sort of Slytherin prank or – more seriously – some sort of trap being set for him, by Lord Voldemort.) And in the light of this, Severus concluded that since he couldn't do any 'good' in Slytherin, or otherwise survive in the house, as he saw it, he Clearly Must Leave The School. (If the idea of being re-sorted occurred to him at all, he presumably discarded it as an option that would look too much to his former housemates as 'treachery', but on some level the idea of missing out on taking NEWTs as a Big Grand Sacrifice Made For Lily had a lot of attraction to it too... Ah, the tangled, convoluted, thought-processes that a teenage Severus Snape is capable of tangling himself up in.)

Meanwhile, Lily still isn't really thinking of Severus as anything more than a friend, and this latest development is highly confusing and vexing for her. (He's walking out on _Her_? Just as it looks like he might not go _baaaad_ after all? What the heck?)

Umm, at least Lily can be certain, now, that she _does_ seem to be making noticeable headway, diverting events, from how she dreamt that they were 'supposed to be', all those years ago.

This story is, for now (August 12th, 2016) restricted to being a two-parter. I have some ideas about Lily's last two years in Hogwarts (whilst Severus is off in France working for some French potion maker or other) but I really should be working on 'The Politics of Men and Beasts' and updates for several other 'Saint Potter?' universe pieces. And then possibly an update for 'Harry Potter and the Greengrass Connection'. And some one-shots, when updates for the pieces without 'complete' tag, aren't going anywhere...

* * *

(School transfers, or not: 15th August, 2016)

In response to some early reviews for this chapter, with regard to school transfers, it's not really something that I particularly want to write, as happening _away_ from Hogwarts, at this date. I don't feel that there's currently (in August, 2016) enough 'official' information (for me) floating around about canon schools other than Hogwarts to support such a storyline to the extent which I'd like, and I don't have the energy and enthusiasm to fill in enough of the details of the organization, curriculum, significant figures, etc, etc of another school to feel satisfied that I have a good 'feel' for such an institution. (Nor do I currently have such information which I can 'borrow' from another story of my own, at this date, although I possibly have an Italian magical school 'in the works', long-term, for a supporting piece in the 'Saint Potter?' universe.)

And besides, it's very much in my mind that the Weasley twins, Fred and George, in canon leave Hogwarts with nothing more than OWLs and still succeed in business (although granted there are two of them and they _did_ get sufficient 'startup' funding from canon Harry Potter to be their own masters by the time that they exit Hogwarts).


End file.
